I see racist people
Keith Olbermann is a big, stupid dumbshit.
No really, I can prove it.
Watch this video (McCain campaign advertisement). Count the penises. If you said “three”, then congratulations - you’re Keith Olbermann! Keith saw the Siegessäule victory column in Berlin, the Washington Monument, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and saw through the B.S. to the truth: they’re phallic symbols. On the other hand, if you only saw the Siegessäule, then you actually watched the video, because it is the only tower of any description in the video (no word on how John McCain managed to sneak the Siegessäule into Berlin to sabotage Obama’s appearance. In Berlin. In front of the Siegessäule.). Taking it further, John Alter fills in the other side of the equals sign: white wimmin.
Yes. And that‘s the oldest and deepest, you know, racist canard in American history, really, is that, you know, the slave is going to come after the wife of the plantation owner. I can‘t sort of dissect and decode these ads that way. I just, somehow maybe my media literacy is lacking. I didn‘t read that out of those ads. But I can see how some people would, and the larger issue, I think, is clear—which is they‘re trying to portray him as being uppity. Now, is that racist? I‘m not sure.
Or, in mathematical terms,
penis3 x 2(vapid white chicks) = scary Barack Obama = racism
I was wondering what that tickly feeling in my brain was when I watched McCain’s ad. Now I know. Back in the reptilian reaches of the hindmost part of my Polish/German New England immigrant heritage, I saw the ad, recognized the column, the (nonexistent) monument and the (invisible) tower, realized that it meant penis, saw the white chicks, and remembered a previous life when I was sitting on the verandah of my plantation in a white three-piece linen suit and a straw hat, sipping mint juleps and being terrified that Barack Obama was going to rape my wife.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh my fuck, Keith and Jon, you simian chucklefucks. Oh, you twisted muppetcunted shitwranglers. Don’t ever change, you dumb bastards. I need you guys around to think about every time I want to die a little inside. Do you see the world through penis-colored glasses or something? Holy living merciful fuck. Truly, we are living in amazing times. To think that two people could see one monument, turn it into three phallic symbols, and then leap to “the oldest and deepest, you know, racist canard in American history”, without the aid of heavy drugs and get paid to do so… stunning.
Q. Do some people think that the ‘liberal media’ is a conservative fabrication?
A. It’s true! Some people are all HURF DURF RUSH FAUX NEWS HURRR while two grown-up commentators are actively fellating Barack Obama live on MSNBC and they believe that this is “moderate”.
Ah, but it’s not just a campaign ad. Turns out, you literally cannot say word one about Our Lady of Hope and Change. No, really. As race-obsessed columnist Timothy Noah points out,
To be thin is to be different physically. Not that there’s anything wrong, mind you, with being a skinny person. But would you want your sister to marry one? Would you want a whole family of skinny people to move in next-door? “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy,” an “unnamed Clinton supporter” wrote on a Yahoo politics message board. My point is that any discussion of Obama’s “skinniness” and its impact on the typical American voter can’t avoid being interpreted as a coded discussion of race.
Congratulations, Democratic Party. You now have a candidate who is completely Teflon untouchable. Even remarking that he has what could be called an ectomorphic physique can be turned around on you as a vile attack on this honorable Afro-American post-racial man’s skin color, as though you’d spent twenty years listening to a bitter, paranoid, racist conspiracy theorist every week. What can we say about him? If I call him a very liberal Democrat, is ‘liberal Democrat’ really my super-secret code word for “black dudetransformative candidate”? The party anointed their candidate as “post-racial” and “unifying” and “transformative”, that he could cross racial lines - and now they literally Can Not Shut The Fuck Up About Race. Hypocrisy we can believe in.
Without digging into your post (I could - but it’s more fun to argue with you in person). We’ve got two teflon candidates this cycle, and I don’t think that that has happened before.
The media loves them some ‘Maverick’ McCain.
My point was more specific than that. It’s that the Democratic Party has said that Obama’s “post-racial” and that it doesn’t matter what color his skin might be, because he speaks for all of us* and now that someone has said “maybe pudgy people can’t identify with the skinny guy” or holy crap, the opposition took out an ad using footage from one of his speeches, now it’s all “Interesting… so that opinion comes from your deep hatred of people who aren’t you? ‘Skinny’ is really just your way of saying ‘black’, right?”
Basically, the only way to talk about Barack Obama is to say that he’s the best thing to happen to America. The alternative is media nitwits picking through your statements to dig up the roots of your bitter hate crimes.
* speaks for all of us because he’s never come down on one side or another on an issue OH BURN
Besides the issue that almost all of your specific facts are wrong, I do agree with you that the media is the stupid.
It’s interesting how you strawman ever issue together so that it almost sounds like you’re making a coherent argument, though.
Looking over his legislative history, I don’t see how you can reasonably claim that Obama has never chosen a side on any issue. Of course, it’s probably OK if that really is the case since McCain has chosen both sides on just about every issue.
Please give me a list of specific facts which I have stated in error. Really.
I think you might be mistaking multiple lines of argument for a single “strawman”. I am addressing three distinct entities:
The Democratic Party. Their candidate is the Transformational Candidate of Hope and Change, Post-Racial, the Unifier. Except they can’t help but decry any attack on him or his politics as race-baiting.
The Media. They are perceived as being nonpartial observers, but seriously, an ad that claims that Obama is all show and no substance and they come up with some contrived bullshit about plantation owners’ wives? What The Fuck.
Obama himself. For a post-racial candidate, it seems like he can’t keep from warning his base that “some people might try to scare you” because he’s black (he never says black, though). He warns that people might talk shit because he “doesn’t look like all those presidents on the dollar bill (all one of him?)”.
Of all the candidates, which one has spent years with a vitriolic racist?
Please list a few bills that Obama (12 years at the University of Chicago Law School without publishing a single scholarly article to a peer-reviewed journal) has pushed through the Senate. Or strong stands he has taken on any legislation. Here’s a freebie: The troop surge is a staggering failure because I said it would be so LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU
McCain has indeed betrayed conservatism like it’s a hot new dance move. My favorite was when he went into a closed room last summer with Ted Kennedy and came out smiling. I’m not talking about McCain.
So: do you believe that McCain’s campaign, either consciously or unconsciously chose to insert racist elements into his “Celebrity” ad, or not? If so… wow. If not.. my original point (Keith Olbermann is a sad, race-obsessed, Obamaniac little man) is pretty much true.
Factual error 1 - Olberman didn’t say there were 3 penisis, he said that Bob Herbert, who appeared on MSNBC earlier that day, had said that. (And yes, Herbert was stupid and wrong about that).
Factual Error 2 - ‘Liberal Media’ Actual analysis does not support the idea that the media is biased in favor of liberal candidates. If anything, the media has a laziness and stupidity bias. (see also http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-onthemedia27-2008jul27,0,712999.story)
Factual Error 3 - One host on one show on the cable news network with the lowest ratings is equivalent to every show on the cable news network with the highest ratings [although Olberman's show does have higher ratings than whatever is on Fox News during his timeslot, I think that Fox News still beats MSNBC overall for ratings] .
‘post-racial’ - the term only appears on Obama’s website in a 2007 Sacramento Bee article. As far as I can tell, it originated in the media as a way to describe his campaign and differentiate it from previous minority candidates (who tended to focus on minority issues). I guess it’s just too bad that the candidate doesn’t live up to your definition of a term that someone else applied to him
The media’s discussion of the race-bating undertones of the ad are warranted, especially considering the history of the ad makers (who have repeatedly used race-baiting - even against McCain). That the discussion was not very helpful (and didn’t make the connection between the stereotype of the hyper-sexual black man and the ad’s use of young white sex symbols more understandable to you is disappointing). Of course, you live in a fantasy version of the world where there is no racism and people succeed or fail on merit alone, so I understand why you don’t make the connection
After watching Obama’s ‘dollar bill’ comment, I thought it was mostly a throw-away line (a joke). I think if we can ignore McCain singing “Bomb Bomb Iran”, we can also ignore it.
Guilt by association is a fun game, but not really helpful. (Hey remember the Keating 5?
).
McCain did spend years actively working to prevent a holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King.
Obama has sponsored 133 bills and co-sponsored 638 bills since Jan. 4 2005. There are plenty of policy specifics available with minimal effort if you’re actually interested in his policy stances (here’s one: windfall tax on oil company profits).
The surge was largely successful because of the Anbar awakening which started months before the surge (in spite of McCain’s claims of the reverse timeline).
The ability to work with people from the other party is one of the highlights of McCain’s ‘maverick’ nature. Of course, he’s changed his position on seemingly every issue to fall in line with the conservative base, though.
- Was against the repeal of Roe V. Wade, is now for it
- Was against torture, now for it
- Was against Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson, now for them
- Was against Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, now is for them
- Was against Bush’s swift-boat fianciers, now for them
- Was for McCain-Feingold campaign fiance law reform, now is breaking it
- Was against Grover Norquist, now for him
- Was against BJU (Bob Jones University), now for it
- Was against ethanol, then for it, then against it again
- Supported the drilling moratorium, now against it
- Supported windfall-tax on oil company profits, now against it
- Was against warrantless-wiretap program, now for it
- Defended privatizing Social Security, now says he’s against it (but sometimes says he’s for it)
- Was going to change the Republican party platform to protect abortion rights, now does not want to do that
- Supported the estate tax, now against it
- Opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects, now supports it (called the Supreme Court decision “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country”)
- Supported normalization of relations with Cuba, now opposes that
- Supported US diplomacy with Hamas, now opposes it
- Supported US diplomacy with Syria, now opposes it
- No longer supports his 1997 lobying-reform legislation
- Supported Lieberman/Warner legislation to combat global warming, now opposes it
- Both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag
… and many more.
And yes, I do think there was a conscious decision to plant some subtle racist elements into that ad. Just like I do think there was a conscious decision to make him out to be the anti-Christ in the ads that call him ‘the one’ (especially after the McCain campaign decided to scrub their site to remove any references to McCain as ‘the one’ just after airing the ad).
So, in summary, I don’t think your original point is valid.
Oh, also Obama was politically active (in the IL state legislature) while at UofChicago, so it’s not too surprising that he did not publish. [Additionally, a good portion of his time there, he was a "Senior Lecturer" and not a professor].